


The Ideal of Calm

by Willowe



Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Fluff, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Trans Character, kitten fic, non-binary Foggy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-29
Updated: 2015-06-29
Packaged: 2018-04-06 18:18:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,804
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4231950
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Willowe/pseuds/Willowe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Foggy is only half paying attention to the shopkeeper because the kitten decides to crawl up their shirt and fall asleep cradled against their neck. At that moment, Foggy doesn’t care how much it’s going to cost because they are never going to give this kitten up.</i>
</p><p>(Or: The non-binary!Foggy-with-a-kitten fic that you didn't know you needed.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Ideal of Calm

**Author's Note:**

> Title taken from the quote, "The ideal of calm exists in a sitting cat," by Jules Reynard. 
> 
> WARNINGS: Brief mentions of dysphoria and violence towards trans people, including one non-graphic scene of violence towards Foggy. 
> 
> Foggy is non-binary in this fic. If that's not your cup of tea (although how could it not be?) then this isn't the fic for you.

Foggy is wearing a maxi dress and a cardigan the day they hear a quiet mewing coming from behind the dumpster one Saturday morning. When they bend down to see if the kitten got stuck in something, the little ball of fur lunges at them, claws getting tangled in the dress as it attempts to bite their ankles.

Foggy shrugs off the cardigan and wraps the kitten in it; they can see two small bodies in the shadows behind the dumpster, knows that if the mother isn’t already dead she’s certainly not coming back now, and walks to the small pet store around the corner from their apartment. The teenager behind the counter gives them the standard Look when they walk in, the one that’s somewhere between _weirdo_ and _sex offender_ that stopped making Foggy angry a long time ago.

The pet store works closely with the SPCA, and Foggy is a regular donator to their fundraisers. It’s how Melissa, the store manager, knows them by name, greeting them warmly as she walks out of the backroom. “Foggy! Good to see you again, what brings you over here today?”

“This,” Foggy says, motioning to the small bundle in their arms. “Found it behind a dumpster.”

She coos as she takes the kitten out from the bundle, petting the small creature gently as she checks it over. “Well it’s male, and definitely severely underfed,” she says, turning the kitten gently over in her hands. “Which makes it hard to guess age. Maybe four weeks old, or five? Gonna need some pretty focused care for the next few weeks. I’d take him in myself, but my older cats wouldn’t get along with him too well. I can drop him off at the SPCA for you, though. Kittens get adopted pretty quickly, once they’re old enough to be rehomed.”

That had been the plan when they first walked over here, but the kitten looks up at Foggy and mews again and they know that they aren’t going to leave it- leave _him_ \- here. “What would I need to do if I kept him?” they ask cautiously. They know what their bank account looks like at the moment. They aren’t making any promises.

(They are, however, redoing their alcohol budget for the next month, mentally moving figures from _Josie’s_ over to the newly-created _Kitten_ column. After some consideration _Takeout_ gets similarly re-categorized as well.)

Mel’s eyes light up and she passes the kitten back over to Foggy, taking their hand and dragging them to a corner of the store, rattling off a list of things they’re going to need and information they need to know, and Foggy is only half paying attention because the kitten decides to crawl up their shirt and fall asleep cradled against their neck.

At that moment, Foggy doesn’t care how much it’s going to cost because they are never going to give this kitten up.

XXXXX

The kitten- Foggy is still trying to figure out an actual name- tentatively eats the canned food that Foggy bought, but definitely prefers nursing from the bottle of kitten formula. Foggy feeds him with one hand, the other holding up the sheaf of papers that Mel gave them about Caring for Kittens 101.

_Kittens can be litterbox trained at approximately 5-6 weeks. Prior to this point, they may need to be stimulated after eating in order to defecate-_

Foggy looks down at the kitten in their lap. “Oh hell no.”

XXXXX

The kitten apparently knows how to use the bathroom on his own, as Foggy finds out when they step in a pile of poop in the kitchen the following morning.

Foggy cancels any plans they had and spends the rest of the day keeping a close eye on the kitten, hurriedly scooping him up and placing him in the litterbox every time it looks like he’s about to squat.

By evening, the kitten has figured out what litterboxes are for and Foggy breathes a sigh of relief.

XXXXX

The kitten needs to be fed every 4-6 hours, which means when Foggy gets to work on Monday morning they have to explain to Matt and Karen why their lunch would take a little longer than usual.

“A kitten,” Matt says dryly. He’s trying to hide his smile, which means he’s trying not to laugh at Foggy. Karen, on the other hand, is smiling openly and demanding to see pictures of the little rascal.

“Yes, a kitten,” Foggy says. “And he’s very adorable, which I could prove to you if you weren’t blind so really, your loss there. Here, Karen, back me up on this one.” They pass her their phone and Karen coos at the cuteness.

“Oh my gosh, Matt, he is really adorable! Pure black but his eyes haven’t changed yet so they’re still blue…”

Matt just chuckles and says, “Hey, if you can afford the costs of a kitten, that’s great. I just know I’d never be able to take care of one.”

“That’s just because you enjoy being miserable and alone too much,” Foggy says cheerfully. “But that’s okay, you can come visit the kitten any time you like.”

On their way back to their apartment at lunch to feed the kitten, some guy on the sidewalk shoves Foggy, sending them stumbling into a woman holding a cup of coffee and spilling the drink down their suit. The woman doesn’t get any of the drink on herself, and Foggy coughs up enough change for her to buy a new drink.

The kitten drinks his formula a little too quickly and throws up on Foggy’s pant leg a little. They don’t mind that nearly as much.

XXXXX

“On… on second thought I’m not sure your firm is quite what I’m looking for… Prices, you know, I’m not sure I can afford it…”

It’s a line Foggy’s heard before but that doesn’t stop them from twisting their hands in the suit skirt they thought it would be a good idea to wear that day and- shit no, if that was their pantyhose ripping they are going to _scream_ -

“Well good riddance to her,” Matt mutters as he closes the door behind the potential client with perhaps more force than is necessary. “No other law firm in Hell’s Kitchen is going to take on that nightmare of a case, and definitely not at our price point.”

“And we don’t need to represent people like her anyway,” Karen chimes in, setting a fresh mug of coffee down in front of Foggy and squeezing their shoulder comfortingly.

Foggy takes a deep breath and forces a smile. It’s not the first time this has happened, and it won’t be the last. “Yeah, screw her,” they say with forced cheerfulness. “Who needs transphobes like that when I have friends like you instead?”

But Foggy’s on edge for the rest of the day, leaves work when it’s still light out instead of staying late to help Matt with a case, and when they gets back to their apartment they spend several long minutes fighting back tears as the kitten twines about their feet.

It’s nothing new. But that doesn’t mean it hurts any less.

XXXXX

A week later a trans woman comes into their office, wanting to know if she has any legal options available to her after getting fired simply for being trans. Matt explains that the city of New York has non-discrimination laws that include gender identity- different from the rest of the state which doesn’t include that, and Foggy has never been happier to live where they do.

Better yet, the woman has texts from her boss and Foggy wants to cry or scream when they read them but it’ll make this easier for them to win the case, and _this_ is why they became a lawyer in the first place.

Still they end up crying in their own apartment later that night, a combination of frustration and sadness that this happened to such a lovely woman at all, and pure relief that this is a case they can win- a case where the victim is still _alive_ to win anything. The kitten jumps up on their chest and mews at them, nudging their face until Foggy laughs and wipes away the tears. The kitten, soothed now that they aren’t crying, curls up in the crook of their neck and purrs.

XXXXX

The kitten is a little hellion. He keeps Foggy up half the night, running in circles around the apartment, until Foggy invests in a pair of ear plugs and starts keeping the kitten locked out their bedroom at night. He nearly gives Foggy a heart attack one evening when they come home from work to find him perched on top of their refrigerator, looking like he was about to jump.

And he’s sneaky too, lurking behind corners and pouncing on Foggy’s feet when they’re least expecting it. Foggy has more than a few small scratch marks on their toes and ankles from too-sharp claws, and they’re just thankful that the kitten doesn’t bite so much as just mouth at things.

Karen laughs when they whine about this one day in the office, complaining about the claws that dig into their good suit pants and the bizarre acrobatic feats that get the kitten up into places that no kitten should be able to reach. “Sounds like you have a mini Daredevil on your hands,” she teases, and Matt rolls his eyes at that but he’s smiling too, and Foggy doesn’t intend to name their kitten after their best friend’s crime-fighting alias but it just sort of… happens.

They don’t call the kitten Daredevil all the time, though. It gets shortened to DD, or Double-D, or something along those lines. Foggy only uses _Daredevil_ when they’re playing the role of an angry parent breaking out their child’s full-name to properly scold them.

The effect is more or less lost on DD. Foggy doesn’t actually mind.

XXXXX

Slowly, DD gets fully weaned off the kitten formula. Foggy more or less stops taking longer lunches, but if they happen to be in the neighborhood of their apartment on their way back from court or from a meeting at a different law firm, they’re not above stopping by to say hello to the little guy anyway. That’s how Karen and Matt both meet him, half an afternoon wasted as Karen plays with DD and Matt tries not to get his toes bitten.

They take a day off work to bring DD to the vet, ignore the way the receptionist eyes their messy bun, their “today’s-smoky-eye-brought-to-you-by-yesterday’s-eyeliner” look with disdain and are thankful that the vet herself is much more civil than the toad manning their front desk. $120 later and DD has his first round of distemper shots and deworming medication in his system, and a test for feline leukemia that they’re still waiting on results from.

Foggy mentally shuffles more money around, and doesn’t regret spending a single penny of it.

XXXXX

Staying late at the office is an inevitability in their line of work. Matt stays with them most nights, or Karen, and Foggy appreciates the company but they don’t appreciate feeling like their friends think they can’t take care of themself. They know the safest way to get home after dark. They even plan ahead most days and wear suits instead of skirts, men’s dress shoes instead of flats, and Foggy hates that they have to think like this but they’re used to it. It’s… not okay, they wouldn’t go that far, but it’s routine. It’s fine.

Except one evening they hadn’t planned on staying late, and Karen and Matt left to interview a potential witness a few hours earlier, and Foggy only realizes that they’re not wearing men’s clothes when they hear the whistles behind them. And they don’t run, because they learned the hard way that running only makes it worse, but there’s a 24-hour diner just past the next alley and if they can get there then-

They don’t get there.

Someone jumps out of the alley, hits Foggy over the head with something large and heavy and Foggy goes down, feels hands dragging them back into the alley, and they’re screaming and kicking but there are too many people and Foggy can’t fight them all off. They’re going to die back here, Foggy cowering and curled in on themself, trying to protect their soft spots from the worst of the blows, and they have never been so terrified in their life-

There’s a sickening _crunch_ but it doesn’t come from Foggy, and the men are scrambling away from them and Foggy risks uncurling a little, looking out to see what’s happened to distract their attackers.

Matt’s happening to their attackers, or more accurately _Daredevil_ is happening to them. The first guy is already knocked out, and the second gets thrown halfway across the alley and into a brick wall and slumps down, unconscious as well. The third tries to make a run for it but Matt throws something at him and knocks him out cold too, and the fourth makes the mistake of picking up a piece of broken wood to use as a weapon. Matt knocks that out of his hand easily and just lays into him, punching him again and again until Foggy is seriously concerned that Matt isn’t planning on stopping at all.

“Matt! Matt, stop it! You gotta- you gotta stop now, okay? He’s down, he’s not moving, you gotta stop,” Foggy babbles, trying to stand up so they can go pull Matt away if they have to, but Foggy’s body isn’t cooperating and they groan as pain temporarily overwhelms them.

Foggy hears rather than sees Matt drop the fourth attacker and feels gentle hands on their shoulders. “Foggy, it’s okay, you’re okay. C’mon, we need to get you to the hospital-”

“No hospitals,” Foggy gasps. They hate doctors, don’t want to see one even in this condition. _Especially_ in this condition. “Just- just bring me back to my place, okay? _Please_?”

Foggy expects Matt to protest but he just nods tensely and says, “Alright. I think I can get us there without anyone seeing,” because of _course_ Matt’s not going to do the smart thing and follow Foggy back at a safe distance, and Foggy would laugh at that but they think laughing would hurt too much at the moment so they don’t say anything at all.

XXXXX

Foggy learned basic first aid long before they even met Matt, learned tricks to get rid of bruises and how to safely bandage up cuts when innocent schoolyard teasing turned into bullies cornering them in hallways and throwing them into lockers. Foggy can take care of themself but it’s nice to let Matt do it instead, gentle hands clearing the blood away from their face and placing butterfly bandages on the wounds that thankfully don’t need stitching.

Matt doesn’t say “You should have been more careful” or “This is why you can’t work late”. Matt knows better than to try to control Foggy’s life like that, but that doesn’t mean that he isn’t tense with barely-controlled anger at what happened to Foggy in that alley that night.

“You should get changed, put on something clean and comfortable,” Matt says. “I’m going to go back out-”

“No,” Foggy says immediately. “Don’t- don’t leave.”

Matt pauses, studying Foggy intently and Foggy doesn’t want to know what he can read right now, doesn’t want to know the thousand different signals that their friend is picking up that tell him how scared shitless Foggy is. But Matt nods and says, “Alright. Can you grab me a change of clothes too then?”

In the bathroom, Foggy studies their face in the mirror, detachedly calculating which of the cuts might end up scarring, tries to figure out how much they actually care. Their hands shake when they remove their shirt, see the long tear in the back that they didn’t notice before. They don’t know if it’s from being dragged into the alley or if their attackers were trying to get the shirt off for other reasons, but it takes every ounce of willpower Foggy has not to throw up.

DD twines about their feet, purring quietly, and Foggy sinks to the bathroom floor, cradles their cat in their arms, and cries.

XXXXX

Karen leaves a can of mace on Foggy’s desk.

Matt doesn’t leave the office until Foggy does, and he walks them back to their apartment even though he lives in the opposite direction.

None of them talk about it and Foggy is more thankful about that than about anything else.

XXXXX

Supposedly, cats purr at the right frequency to help promote healing. Foggy doesn’t know if this is true, but they won’t deny that they take comfort from cuddling DD as much as the kitten will allow over the next few weeks.

When Matt shows up on their fire escape one night, cradling his arm and desperately in need of stitches, Foggy sews him up patiently and with as little unwanted commentary as possible. They figure they’ll be owing Matt for saving their skin for a long while yet, so the least they can do is be as supportive as possible about all of this.

DD doesn’t like the material of the Daredevil costume, but when Matt peels off a glove DD butts against his hand, purring louder than something of his size should be able to.

Foggy talks Matt into spending the night, and when they wake up the following morning it’s to find Matt fast asleep on their couch with DD curled up on his chest.

Foggy really hopes that that fact about cats purring is true. Matt can use all the help healing that he can get.

XXXXX

Foggy hates shaving their legs. Hates it with a burning passion because _god_ , it takes so long and they always feel like they’re missing spots, and it’s just _gross_ having to clean up all that hair afterwards. But Matt and them are meeting with their new client’s ex-employer tomorrow, and maybe the smart thing to do would be to just wear a suit to the meeting but Foggy will be damned if they wear what makes other people comfortable instead of what makes themself comfortable.

But important business meetings demand a certain level of professionalism nonetheless, which means no leg hair poking through their pantyhose, which means they get to spend the evening shaving their legs and trying to not to nick themself too badly.

They can hear DD playing in the living room, can hear the crinkle of the new toy they bought the other day, and it almost lulls them into a false sense of security. But like his namesake DD can’t avoid trouble for long, and it’s only a few minutes later that Foggy hears a loud _crash_ coming from the kitchen.

They bolt from the living room, wearing just boxers and with one leg still covered in shaving cream, to find the kitten lying a pile of broken glass from where he apparently knocked the bowl off the counter. The kitten is mewing loudly and shit, _shit_ that’s blood on the floor-

Foggy spends the next hour making sure that they get all the glass out from the cut and googling how to take care of minor cat injuries, because they will take DD to the emergency vet if they have to but even after mentally rearranging their budget a dozen times they have no idea how they would afford it.

A few hours later, DD is already running around the apartment again, and Foggy is torn between amusement and exasperation at how much he’s acting like his namesake.

This time, they trap DD in the bathroom with them while they finish shaving. They aren’t taking any chances of anything else happening.

XXXXX

DD’s next vet appointment falls on a court day for Nelson and Murdock, so Karen offers to take them herself. Foggy gives her their credit card to pay for everything, doesn’t even think twice about it because they would trust Karen with their life at this point and that’s kind of saying something.

Karen gives them the rundown of what shots DD gets- the second distemper and a rabies shot this time as well. Feline leukemia tests come back negative and Foggy breathes a sigh of relief, and celebrates by buying DD a bag of treats.

The next morning, they find the bag pulled out of the cupboard and torn open, treats scattered across the kitchen floor. They just laugh and sweep up as many as they can find. For the next few days, DD keeps pulling treats out from under the cabinets and refrigerator. Foggy doesn’t think they’ll be buying another bag anytime soon.

XXXXX

Foggy doesn’t get dysphoria often, not like some of the other trans people they know. Usually it’s just little things, comments that set them off or days where it seems like none of the outfits they have quite match the way their gender feels that day.

But sometimes, sometimes it’s _bad_. The last time it happened had been college, Matt coming back to the dorm to find Foggy shaking under their blankets, hands twisted around the sheets to stop them from clawing at their own skin. Matt is a little more prepared this time than he was back then, when Foggy can’t bring themself to get out of bed, can’t find the words to even fake an illness as an excuse because they feel weak and useless, they’re supposed to be a functioning adult now they can’t let this stop them from doing their job-

Matt shows up uninvited, lets himself into the apartment with the spare key Foggy gave him years ago. Karen is in tow but she waits in the living room as Matt goes into the bedroom to coax Foggy up, into the comfiest and most gender-neutral clothes they can find, lures them out with the promise of just relaxing for the day.

Foggy feels guilty that they’re distracting Matt from work, feels embarrassed that both of their friends are here taking care of them instead of doing more important things, but Karen simply scoops up DD and sets him in Foggy’s lap. “You’re important too, you know,” she says cheerfully as she moves into the kitchen. “Now do you want a cup of tea, or not?”

It’s Foggy who ends up lying on the couch this time with DD curled up next to them, the tiny kitten purring loud enough for Foggy to feel it in their chest. They think if cats purring has any healing properties at all it’s not limited to just physical wounds, and they hug the kitten a little bit tighter at the thought.

**Author's Note:**

> I am non-binary, and I drew on some of my experiences while writing Foggy. But I didn't want to give them a label because I want this to be as open as possible, so maybe other people can relate to Foggy's experiences or feelings. 
> 
> I really wanted this to be pure fluff, but I'm a sucker for hurt/comfort and this thing got away from me more than I intended. Hopefully no one minds the little bit of whump that I wrote in.


End file.
